What I Loved

examiner and we made arrangements in the hushed atmosphere of deference that surrounds people who have just stepped into grief, but the fact was that the world didn't seem to be the world anymore, and when I think back on that week, on the funeral and the cemetery and the people who came, there is a shallowness to all of it, as though my vision had changed and everything I saw had been robbed of its thickness.
    I suppose that the loss of depth came from disbelief. Knowing the truth isn't enough. My whole being refuted Matt's death, and I was always expecting him to walk through the door. I heard him moving around in his room and coming up the stairs. Once I heard him say "Dad." The sound of his voice was as distinct as if he had been a foot away from me. Belief would come very slowly, and it would come sparingly, in moments that bored holes into the curious stage set that had replaced the world around me. Two days after the funeral, I was wandering around the apartment and heard noises from Matthew's room. When I looked through the door, I saw Erica lying in Matt's bed. She had curled up under his sheets and was rocking back and forth as she clutched his pillow and bit into it I walked over to her and sat down at the edge of the bed. She continued to rock. The pillow case was wet with ragged spots of saliva and tears. I put my hand on her shoulder, but she wrenched her torso toward the wall and began to scream. Her howls rose up from deep inside her throat—hoarse and guttural. "I want my baby! Get away! I want my baby!" I withdrew my hand. She punched the wall and beat the bed. She sobbed and bellowed out the words over and over. Her cries seemed to gouge my lungs, and I stopped breathing each time they came. As I sat there and listened to Erica, I felt afraid, not of her grief but of my own. I let her noises tear and scrape through me. Yes, I said to myself. This is true. These sounds are real. I looked at the floor and imagined myself lying on it. To stop, I thought, just to stop. I felt dry. That was the problem. I was dry as an old bone—and I envied Erica her flailing and her shouting. I couldn't find it in me, and I let her do it instead. She ended up with her head in my lap, and I looked down at her squashed face with its red nose and swollen eyes. I put four fingers on her cheek and let them run to her chin. "Matthew," I said to her. Then I said it again. "Matthew."
    Erica looked up at me. Her lips were trembling. "Leo," she said. "How are we going to live?"
    The days were long. I must have had thoughts but I don't remember them. Mostly I sat. I didn't read or cry or rock or move. I sat in the chair where I often sit now, and I looked out the window. I watched the traffic and the pedestrians with their shopping bags. I studied the yellow cabs, the tourists dressed in shorts and T-shirts, and then after I had been sitting for hours, I would go into Matt's room and touch his things. I never picked up anything. I let my fingers move over his rock collection. I touched his T-shirts in his drawer. I laid my hands on his backpack, still stuffed with dirty clothes from camp. I felt his unmade bed. We didn't make the bed all summer, and we didn't move a single object in his room. By the time morning came, Erica had often made her way to Matthew's bed. Sometimes she remembered climbing into it in the middle of the night. Other times she didn't.
    She had started walking in her sleep again, not every night, but a couple of times a week. During these ambulatory trances, Erica was always searching for something. She yanked open drawers in the kitchen and dug into closets. She pulled books off the shelf in her study and peered at the bare wood where the volumes had been. One night I found her standing in the middle of the hallway. Her hand turned an invisible knob and she thrust open an invisible door and began to clutch and grab at the Mr. I let her look because I was afraid of disturbing her. Asleep, she had a determination she had lost in wakefulness, and when I felt her stirring beside me and sitting up in bed, I would rouse myself and dutifully stand up to follow her around the loft until the ritual searching was over. I became a nocturnal spectator, a vigilant second to Erica's unconscious roaming. There were nights when I stood in front of the door that led to the landing, worried that she might leave and take her search out into the streets, but whatever it was that she wanted to find, the thing was lost in the